Three ‘hard truths’ about Canada’s trade

In Canada’s case, a small number of sectors reliably generate significant trade surpluses, which help finance large trade deficits incurred in other parts of our economy.

Canada is an “open” economy that depends on cross-border flows of trade, investment and data/knowledge to maintain high living standards. To pay our way in a very competitive world, Canadians must produce and sell goods and services to customers in other countries. These exports furnish the means to pay for the vast array of imports that contribute to the well-being of Canadian households and allow our businesses to operate efficiently and grow by accessing bigger markets.

In 2022, Canada exported $779 billion of goods to other countries, along with $161 billion of services, for a total of $940 billion. The services category includes a wide array of commercial services including professional, scientific, technical, digital and financial, as well as transportation services and international tourism (when non-Canadian visitors travel to spend money here).

About three-quarters of Canada’s exports are destined for a single market—the United States, whose economy has steadily expanded in size over time to reach some US$25 trillion of gross domestic product today. Canada also sources the bulk of our imports from the U.S.

The centrality of the American market to Canada’s economic prosperity is the first “hard truth” about Canada’s trade, a point explored in a recent paper by Steve Globerman. Despite periodic efforts to diversify Canada’s trade and commercial links over the last 50 years, Canada remains as closely tied to the American economy today as we were in the 1990s. There’s little reason to believe the Trudeau government’s recently unveiled “Indo-Pacific” strategy will change the situation. Proximity, a common language and business culture, and the impact of extensive and unusually deep business and personal ties all serve to reinforce the American-centric character of Canada’s trade. It follows that the U.S. should continue to figure prominently in the trade promotion and investment attraction activities of Canadian governments.

A second “hard truth” about Canada’s trade is the outsized place of natural resource-based products in the export mix. The first table below breaks down Canada’s goods and services exports in 2022 into the main groupings.

Table 1

Added together, energy, non-metallic minerals and related products, metal ores, forest products and agri-food comprise almost half of the country’s total international exports of goods and services combined. Energy alone supplied 27 per cent of Canada’s merchandise exports (and 23 per cent of total exports) last year, generating a remarkable $212 billion in export-driven income for Canadian businesses, workers and governments.

Within the energy basket, oil and oil-based products dominate, providing about three-quarters of energy-based export revenues. Contrary to innumerable speeches and press releases issued by the current federal government, the energy share is likely to rise in the next several years, as LNG production from British Columbia comes on-line and Western Canadian oil exports increase following the completion of pipeline expansion projects.

The final “hard truth” is closely related to the second but carries a more nuanced message. Ultimately, every country will have a ledger showing the trade surpluses and trade deficits across its various industries. In Canada’s case, a small number of sectors reliably generate significant trade surpluses, which help finance large trade deficits incurred in other parts of our economy.

The second table provides a snapshot of Canada’s trade “balances”—the mix of deficits and surpluses by broad industry category.

Table 2

The story is a fairly simple one; positive trade balances in the energy, mining, forestry and agri-food sectors offset chronic—and in some cases very sizable—trade deficits in consumer goods, chemicals and plastics, motor vehicles/parts, and industrial and electronic goods. We also run a smallish deficit in our overall services trade.

The trade data are informative. Among other things, they tell us where Canada has, in the language of economists, a “comparative advantage” in the global context. For a market-based economy, a pattern of positive trade balances is evidence that it very likely enjoys a comparative advantage in the industries which report consistent trade surpluses. Armed with such information, smart policymakers should strive to create and sustain an attractive business and investment climate for the industries that produce trade surpluses. Unfortunately, this is a lesson that today’s federal government in distant Ottawa has struggled to digest.

Author: Jock Finlayson

Related Topics:#Canada'sTrade #CanadaEconomy #CanadaEnergy #CanadaExports #FraserInstitute #JockFinlayson

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Published on April 5, 2025

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From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By Thomas English

A dark web doxxing website targeting Tesla owners and allies of Elon Musk appears to be compiled from hacked data originally stolen from a massive ParkMobile app breach in 2021, according to records obtained by a data privacy group.

The site, known as DogeQuest, first appeared in March and publishes names, home addresses, contact details and other personal information tied to Tesla drivers and DOGE staff. Marketed as a hub for anti-Musk “creative expressions of protest,” the platform has been linked to real-world vandalism and remains live on the dark web. Federal investigations into DogeQuest are already underway, the New York Post first reported.

“If you’re on the hunt for a Tesla to unleash your artistic flair with a spray can, just step outside — no map needed! At DOGEQUEST, we believe in empowering creative expressions of protest that you can execute from the comfort of your own home,” the surface-web DogeQuest site reads. “DOGEQUEST neither endorses nor condemns any actions.”

A screenshot of the DogeQuest surface website captured on April 3, 2025. (Captured by Thomas English/Daily Caller News Foundation)

ObscureIQ, a data privacy group, compiled a breakdown of the data — obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation — and determined 98.2% of records used to populate the site matched individuals affected by the 2021 ParkMobile breach.

Encouraging destruction of Teslas throughout the country is extreme domestic terrorism!! https://t.co/8TCNIbrQxA

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 18, 2025

DogeQuest originally appeared as a surface web doxxing hub, encouraging vandalism of Teslas and displaying names, addresses, contact details and, in some cases, employment information for roughly 1,700 individuals. The site used stolen ParkMobile records along with data purchased from brokers, flagging anyone who had a Tesla listed in their vehicle registration profile, according to ObscureIQ’s analysis.

The platform — now operating as “DogeQuest Unleashed” via a .onion dark web address — has also published personal details of high-value targets including senior military officials, federal employees and private sector executives in Silicon Valley. A spreadsheet reviewed by the Daily Caller News Foundation indicates several individuals targeted work areas like cybersecurity, defense contracting, public health and diplomatic policy. DOGE staff and their families appear prominently throughout the data.

A screenshot of DogeQuest’s surface website, captured on April 3, 2025. (Captured by Thomas English/Daily Caller News Foundation)

No other reporting has yet tied DogeQuest directly to the ParkMobile breach, which impacted over 21 million users in 2021. The company, which facilitates cashless parking across the U.S., quietly disclosed the breach in April of that year, admitting that “basic user information” had been accessed. ObscureIQ’s research shows that exposed data included email addresses, license plate numbers and phone numbers — enough to triangulate identity when paired with commercial data brokers.

The company agreed to a $32 million settlement to resolve a class-action lawsuit stemming from the data breach. The lawsuit alleged that ParkMobile failed to secure its Amazon Web Services cloud storage, allowing access to the data. Although payment data were reportedly not compromised, plaintiffs argued the exposed information still posed serious privacy risks — a claim now reinforced by its use in the DogeQuest doxxing campaign.

Despite federal attention, the site has proven difficult to keep offline, as the dark web mirror incorporates anonymized hosting methods, frustrating law enforcement takedown efforts.

The Department of Justice charged three suspects last week linked to physical attacks on Tesla vehicles, charging stations and dealerships across multiple states, though it has not publicly confirmed any link between those suspects and DogeQuest. Meanwhile, the FBI has acknowledged it is “actively working” on both the doxxing campaign and a parallel rise in swatting incidents affecting DOGE affiliates.

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Will Trump’s ‘Liberation Day’ Tariffs End In Disaster Or Prosperity?

Published on April 5, 2025

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From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By J.D. Foster

“Liberation Day” has come. So what does it mean? Beats the hell out of me.

What we know is that President Trump’s avalanche of tariffs was to hit a peak on April 2; not end, mind you; not necessarily “the” peak, as more could be on the way; but a peak.

No Trump policy more completely breaks with America’s past than his “beautiful” tariffs on just about everything coming into the United States from just about anywhere.

Will this new policy liberate American manufacturing from foreign shackles? Will it usher in a new era of prosperity, keeping in mind the United States had for many years the consistently best-performing economy in the industrialized world, even overcoming the many inane obstacles erected by the Biden-Harris Administration?

Or will it leave the United States isolated, friendless, and weakened?

The correct answer at this point is no one knows, not even the bloviating talking heads on TV confidently predicting demise or Shangri-la.

Think of it this way. Suppose you’re a restaurant chef and a woman hands you a new recipe. Her father turns 75 soon and they want to have a party at the restaurant. The recipe is for the father’s favorite dish, one her mother made for years.

The recipe looks old, with odd ingredients and processes you’ve not seen before. Now judge it as a chef.

You can’t. Even as you start chopping and dicing, mixing ingredients as instructed, you’re not too sure how this is going to turn out. You have to wait until the dish is on the plate and taste it.

That’s the case with Trump’s tariffs. How will this all turn out? It’s too soon to tell.

The stock market sure doesn’t like it, but why should it? The investor class doesn’t understand this any better than you do. What they do understand is this new policy has upended assumptions and created enormous new uncertainties. We know that dish as those ingredients are always good for a big pullback.

Much of the confusion arises because we don’t know the underlying policy and likely this uncertainty is intentional. Trump likes keeping his counterparts, in this case our trading partners, guessing. If it means Americans are confused for a bit, Trump’s cool with that. Breaking eggs to make an omelette. It will pass and America will be great again afterward. Bon appetite.

If the core policy is to erect massive and mostly permanent tariff walls behind which American firms can hide, then we know how this will turn out: America, meet the dustbin of history.

If the core policy is to force our trading partners to deal with America fairly by reducing their trade barriers after which Trump will remove his tariffs, then this could turn out very well. Tariffs (and non-tariff barriers) in the U.S. and those of our trading partners would fall, reinvigorating the free trade that has energized prosperity for decades.

Which is it? Walls and doom or freedom and prosperity? Again, too early to tell.

Whatever else Trump does in his second term, these tariffs will define his presidency, akin in consequence to Ronald Reagan’s pro-growth tax cuts and Joe Biden’s inflation.

Trump in his second term clearly lives by the saying, “go bold or go home.” He’s got “bold” down pat. We will see over the next year or so whether he and the Republicans go home. Has he liberated Democrats from any fear of Republicans in the mid-terms or in 2028, or he’s liberated America from any fear of Democratic socialism and wokism returning in our lifetimes. The chips are all-in. Soon we will see the cards. Uncertainty, indeed.

JD Foster is the former chief economist at the Office of Management and Budget and former chief economist and senior vice president at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. He now resides in relative freedom in the hills of Idaho.